Typical misconceptions about religion and mystical experience

Andy Wright makes comments in response to "More on Extraordinary claims," I will answer his comments here because they are typical of certain atheist misconceptions that I have been trying to correct since I started on internet apologetics boards. The average atheist on the net seems to believe that religion is for feeble minded dullards who can't think, that's its effects are clearly proven to be very bad for both the individual and society, and that belief is receding into he mists of history. Not only are these ideas totally wrong, but they are the exact opposite of truth. Not only so, but that these things are totally false is clearly demonstrably provable with the best scientific evidence. Religion is actually very good for you, religious people are much better adjusted, by and large, than most atheists. Religious people are happier, they are less likely to commit crimes, if you except fundamentalists their marriages are better.

Wright was reacting to my statement that religion is normative for human experince, and the point of saying that was to show that belief is not an extraordinary claim. So let us keep that in mind, because most of Wrights arguments lose sight of this poin.

Andy Wright:

you say "religious belief is normative for human behavior. It is not merely "normal" but "normative" meaning it sets the standard. Belief is basic to human psyche, to our understanding of the good, of meaning in life, the ultimate limits of reality, the grounding of nature and being itself,"
this is not true. there have been and continue to be successful human societies where religion is not part of the society, where simply not knowing was acceptable.

This is clearly disproved by history. There has never been a single non religious society anyone where on earth. There have only been a handful of attempts to make societies that were non religious, and in not only did those cases fail, but they were the imposition of an ideology by an elite who imposed its will upon the masses.There has never been a single organic culture where the masses were just naturally not religious. Even in the Soviet union and china, where the only attempts to destroy the faith of the masses was imposed, it failed miserably. At the height of the cultural revolution in China when the government was the most anti-religious, the people were still 51% religious and Christianity made up a huge portion.

Wright again:

you seem to define religion as belief in a single higher power, yet among the societies that have religion, there have been as many societies that beleived in multiple spirits in a range from every single thing having a spirit to there being many extra powerful beings that you would call gods.

This is my true definition of religion, I've given it hundreds of times on message board all over the net and it is on my website in my credo where I clearly go over the all the beliefs I hold. I got this definition from Dr. Neil McFarlane in his lecture notes in his class on "religion in a Global perspective" at Perkins School of Theology (SMU). I think it was influenced by Dr Fredrick Strung ("string").


My definition of religion:

In my view Religion is an attept to identify a human problemic, that is the basic problematic nature at the heart of being human. Having identified it, reilgious traditions seek to resolve the problematic nature of human life by offering a transformative experince which allows one to transcend the difficulty and to be fulfilled or feel more human or be "saved." Religious traditions also usually seek to mediate this transformation through cerimony or some sort of theological orientation. These three things make up the nature of religion:

(a) identification of the problematic

(b) Transformative power to overcome the nature of the problematic

(c) a means of mediating this transformative power.

All religions offer these things, weather the problematic be seen as separation from nature, or imbalance with cosmic forces, re-birth through desire which leads to suffering, or moral sin in rebellion against God.

Transformations come in all sorts of packages too, they can be the big experince of born again Christianity (mediated through the "sinners prayer") or they can be the mystical experince, mediated through the mass, or enlightenment, mediated through mediation, mandala, mantra and other mediation aids, or what have you.

The reason for identifying with a particular religious tradition is because one feels that this particular tradition identifies the problematic better than others, and offers mediation in a more sure or certain or compelte way. One must go with the tradition with which one feels the strongest connection.


For me that is the Christian Tradition, primarily because I feel that the historical connection to Jesus of Nazareth, and the unique concept of Grace mark the Christian tradition as the best mediation of the Ultimate Transformative Experience. But more on that latter.

So your statement is quite false. I do not limit by view of religion to belief in a single "powerful being." In fact that view of what I believe is so far off, you clearly know nothing about my views. Obviously you are merely reacting to the label "Christian" and have not bothered to find out that Christianity is very diverse. I do not believe that God is a single powerful being! I do not believe that God is "A being." I believe that God is "being itself." That means God is the basis of what being is, the foundation of all being, not a being, but the basic ground of all being. I further believe that differing religions and concepts of God and gods are merely sign posts that point to this foundation of being. The are metaphors and analogies that point to something beyond themselves, something beyond our ability to understand. I have written many pages on this on my website. The major such pages can be found here: The Ground of Being

Wright goes on:

the range and differences among them are so great as to make lumping them all under 'religion' is almost ridiculous.

That is indicative misunderstanding the nature of religion is. Religion is so much bigger, better, and more important than you are willing to accept, or even than you suspect.

there have been many societies around the world where a human was thought of as the current incarnation of god. this differs so much from Christianity as to again, be almost impossible to be considered the same thing.

That's a misconception. It doesn't really matter, it's a meaningless point anyway, because I'm sure I know much more about world religion than you do. Remember the class I mention, above, "religion in a global perspective?" Neil McFarland who taught that class lived in Japan for 30 years. He was the leading expert on the New Religions of Japan (his book was Rush House of the Gods--I love that title!). He was very sympathetic to Eastern religions and he studied them with major Shinto and Buddhists priests in Japan. That class focussed on religions of Asia, especially Japan. There are not other societies or religions which have exactly the same understanding of deity as Christianity. There are none where a human being was thought of as God in the way that Christian theology came to regard Christ after the second century or so. But to say that these religions can't be regarded as the same thing is just poppy cock. They all fit with the definition given above and they all fit with the concept of mystical union which I have clearly espoused for years.

Wright:

and in all of those societies, there were a wide range of level of belief in the locally accepted 'religion'. some were vigorous hyper believers and most belived some of it but had doubts about a little of it and some believed very little or none at all of it. societies varied a great deal in how much they tolerated the non-beleivers, from none at all to total tolerance, and still, even when there was no tolerance, there were non-beleivers who kept silent about it. your claim that religion is 'normative' lacks anthropological basis for societies and is lacking even more when applied to individuals.

Notice that you don't give a single example. Prior to the eighteenth century true atheists who really believed there was no God at all of any kind were very rare, and mostly they were uneducated. They had no scientific basis for their claims, merely anger toward religious people and institutions.No actually your misconceptions lack anthropological backing. I am quoting anthropologists. I'm quoting major social scientists such as Abraham Maslow who did studies on the nature of religious experience and found that its one of the greatest things or people. Maslow's book was Peak Experience and there is a copy online. A vast body of social sciences data shows that religion is far better for you than unbelief.


Wright:

Atheists today have all that stuff you claim belief is basic to and they have it without . . . guess what . . . belief in any god or religion. you might not want to admit there are well adjusted atheists making positive contributions to the world, and i am not sure why you are so intolerant of atheism or why it threatens you so, but you claim about belief being essential to a person or a society is . . . bogus.

Saying that religion is normative is not at all the same as saying that there are no well adjusted atheists. That's not the issue at all. In fact the data does show that believers are much better "adjusted" and less mental illness and less depression than unbelievers.

again from my website:


Religioius belief indicative of good mental health

a)Religous Pepole are More Self Actualized

Dr. Michale Nielson,Ph.D. Psychology and religion.
"http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/ukraine/index.htm"

Quote:

"What makes someone psychologically healthy? This was the question that guided Maslow's work. He saw too much emphasis in psychology on negative behavior and thought, and wanted to supplant it with a psychology of mental health. To this end, he developed a hierarchy of needs, ranging from lower level physiological needs, through love and belonging, to self- actualization. Self-actualized people are those who have reached their potential for self-development. Maslow claimed that mystics are more likely to be self-actualized than are other people. Mystics also are more likely to have had "peak experiences," experiences in which the person feels a sense of ecstasy and oneness with the universe. Although his hierarchy of needs sounds appealing, researchers have had difficulty finding support for his theory."

Gagenback

Quote:

In terms of psychological correlates, well-being and happiness has been associated with mystical experiences,(Mathes, Zevon, Roter, Joerger, 1982; Hay & Morisy, 1978; Greeley, 1975; Alexander, Boyer, & Alexander, 1987) as well as self-actualization (Hood, 1977; Alexander, 1992). Regarding the latter, the developer of self-actualization believed that even one spontaneous peak or transcendental experience could promote self-actualization. Correlational research has supported this relationship. In a recent statistical meta-analysis of causal designs with Transcendental Meditation (TM) controlling for length of treatment and strength of study design, it was found that: TM enhances self-actualization on standard inventories significantly more than recent clinically devised relaxation/meditation procedures not explicitly directed toward transcendence [mystical experience] (p. 1; Alexander, 1992)

b) Christian Repentence Promotes Healthy Mindedness

william James
Gilford lectures

Quote:

"Within the Christian body, for which repentance of sins has from the beginning been the critical religious act, healthy-mindedness has always come forward with its milder interpretation. Repentance according to such healthy-minded Christians means getting away from the sin, not groaning and writhing over its commission. The Catholic practice of confession and absolution is in one of its aspects little more than a systematic method of keeping healthy-mindedness on top. By it a man's accounts with evil are periodically squared and audited, so that he may start the clean page with no old debts inscribed. Any Catholicwill tell us how clean and fresh and free he feels after the purging operation. Martin Luther by no means belonged to the healthy-minded type in the radical sense in which we have discussed it, and be repudiated priestly absolution for sin. Yet in this matter of repentance he had some very healthy-minded ideas, due in the main to the largeness of his conception of God. -..."

e. Recent Empirical Studies Prove Religious Believers have less depression, mental illness lower Divorce rate, ect.

J. Gartner, D.B. Allen, The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3090

Quote:

"The Reviews identified 10 areas of clinical staus in whihc research has demonstrated benefits of religious commitment: (1) Depression, (2) Suicide, (3) Delinquency, (4) Mortality, (5) Alchohol use (6) Drug use, (7) Well-being, (8) Divorce and martital satisfaction, (9) Physical Health Status, and (10) Mental health outcome studies....The authors underscored the need for additional longitudinal studies featuring health outcomes. Although there were few, such studies tended to show mental health benefit. Similarly, in the case of teh few longevity or mortality outcome studies, the benefit was in favor of those who attended chruch...at least 70% of the time, increased religious commitment was associated with improved coping and protection from problems."

[The authors conducted a literature search of over 2000 publications to glean the current state of empirical study data in areas of Spirituality and health]


This part is very important becasue it speaks diretly to what you said about atheists being well adjusted.


2) Shrinks assume religious experience Normative.
Dr. Jorge W.F. Amaro, Ph.D., Head psychology dept. Sao Paulo

[ http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/amaro.html]

a) Unbeliever is the Sick Soul

"A non spiritualized person is a sick person, even if she doesn't show any symptom described by traditional medicine. The supernatural and the sacredness result from an elaboration on the function of omnipotence by the mind and can be found both in atheist and religious people. It is an existential function in humankind and the uses each one makes of it will be the measure for one's understanding."

I know you are going to get angry about that because people usually do. but this is a scientific fact. It comes from many studies that compare those who have reilgious experiences to those who do not. They find constantly that those who are are better ad musted, less depression and mental illness. It's not just anyone says "I am a Christian" but those who have religious experinces.


b. psychotherapeutic discipline re-evalutes Frued's criticism of religion

Quote:

Amaro--

"Nowadays there are many who do not agree with the notion that religious behavior a priori implies a neurotic state to be decoded and eliminated by analysis (exorcism). That reductionism based on the first works by Freud is currently under review. The psychotherapist should be limited to observing the uses their clients make of the representations of the image of God in their subjective world, that is, the uses of the function of omnipotence. Among the several authors that subscribe to this position are Odilon de Mello Franco (12), .... W. R. Bion (2), one of the most notable contemporary psychoanalysts, ..."

[sources sited by Amaro BION, W. R. Atenção e interpretação (Attention and interpretation). Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1973.

MELLO FRANCO, O. de. Religious experience and psychoanalysis: from man-as-god to man-with-god. Int. J. of Psychoanalysis (1998) 79,]



c) This relationship is so strong it led to the creation of a whole discipline in psychology; transactionalism

Neilson on Maslow

Quote:

"One outgrowth of Maslow's work is what has become known as Transpersonal Psychology, in which the focus is on the spiritual well-being of individuals, and values are advocated steadfastly. Transpersonal psychologists seek to blend Eastern religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) or Western (Christian, Jewish or Moslem) mysticism with a form of modern psychology. Frequently, the transpersonal psychologist rejects psychology's adoption of various scientific methods used in the natural sciences."
"The influence of the transpersonal movement remains small, but there is evidence that it is growing. I suspect that most psychologists would agree with Maslow that much of psychology -- including the psychology of religion -- needs an improved theoretical foundation."

3) Religion is positive factor in physical health.

"Doctrors find Power of faith hard to ignore
By Usha Lee McFarling
Knight Ridder News Service
(Dec. 23, 1998)
Http://www.tennessean.com/health/stories/98/trends1223.htm

Quote:

"Some suspect that the benefits of faith and churchgoing largely boil down to having social support — a factor that, by itself, has been shown to improve health. But the health effects of religion can't wholly be explained by social support. If, for example, you compare people who aren't religious with people who gather regularly for more secular reasons, the religious group is healthier. In Israel, studies comparing religious with secular kibbutzim showed the religious communes were healthier."Is this all a social effect you could get from going to the bridge club? It doesn't seem that way," said Koenig, who directs Duke's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health .Another popular explanation for the link between religion and health is sin avoidance."

"The religious might be healthier because they are less likely to smoke, drink and engage in risky sex and more likely to wear seat belts.But when studies control for those factors, say by comparing religious nonsmokers with nonreligious nonsmokers, the religious factors still stand out. Compare smokers who are religious with those who are not and the churchgoing smokers have blood pressure as low as nonsmokers. "If you're a smoker, make sure you get your butt in church," said Larson, who conducted the smoking study."


see also: he Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993 For data on a many studies which support this conclusion.

4) Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.

Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predicter of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combindation of religious items, including prayer, religionship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearlify the associations of religious committment with general well-being."

(5) Greater happiness


Religion and Happiness

by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD


Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness



Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.

Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nielsen, M. E. (1998). An assessment of religious conflicts and their resolutions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 181-190.

Nielsen again:

In the days before research boards reviewed research proposals before the studies were conducted, Pahnke devised an experiment to induce people to have a religious experience. On a Good Friday, when they were to meditate in a chapel for 2.5 hours, twenty theology students were given either psilocybin or a placebo. The students who were given the psilocybin reported intense religious experiences, as you might imagine. Their levels of happiness also were significantly greater than the control group reported. But what is especially interesting is that these effects remained 6 months after the experiment, as the psilocybin group reported more "persistent and positive changes" in their attitudes to life than did the placebo group.



Pahnke, W. H. (1966). Drugs and mysticism. International Journal of Parapsychology, 8, 295-314.


Now finally let's not forget the context of the original issue. I was showing that belief in God cannot be an "extraordinary claim" because it's normative for human experince. That means it sets the standard. I have proven that it does. This has nothing to do with proving that it's true, it is merely a matter of proving that it is standard for human experince. The vast majority of all humans who have ever lived have believed in some form of God, we are fit to be religious, it's better for our minds and our bodies. We were religious 65,000 years ago, our distant ancestors, our cousins the Neanderthals, were religious. Humanity has been religious longer than it has been human! Obviously then it is normative. IT doesn't matter that there are few exceptions, that's not the point. It doesn't make you a bad person, to not be religious. Nor does it make you abnormal or somehow lacking. But is the standard human experience to be religious. that is simply a fact.

More on Extraordinary Claims

In other words, belief in God is far from extraordinary, so the basis for comparison that we need to label a claim “extraordinary” has to be taken on a case-by-case basis. We can’t just label all religious thinking “extraordinary claims.” Clearly belief in God is not extraordinary, as I demonstrate in the previous blog piece (but this hardly requires demonstration). The “extraordinary” is a problematic term in science. Thomas S. Kuhn argued that scientific paradigms turn over when there are too many anomalies to explain them all through the orthodox paradigm. The “normal” business of science, according to Kuhn, is that of absorbing anomalies into the paradigm. “Anomalies” are not necessarily extraordinary, but both concepts deal with departures from the expected. The atheists tend to think of this Saganian imperative in terms of dazzling wonderment. In other words, extraordinary claims are those that they find extremely hard to believe; big amazing claims that require big amazing proof. Examples I’ve seen the average atheist on message boards give would include things like God arranging the stars to spell out messages confirming the truth of Christianity, parting the red sea and so forth. These ideas are much more grandiose than Kuhn’s anomalies. Richard Dawkins seeks to argue that God is improbable on the basis of uniqueness. There is no other evidence for any sort of thing like God anywhere in our field of experience as a species. Thus God has to be improbable because we have nothing else to compare God to. Again we are dealing with the concept of the out of the ordinary. We are dealing with ideas of the unique, that which stands out. This is a good indication that scientific thinking seeks an orthodoxy that requires mutually accepted cultural constructs to from a basis of consensus. Of course scientific thinkers will stand staunchly upon the empirical “totally proven” aspects of their views. But what is really happening in science and in party lines that branch off of certain people’s monopolizing of science is that it’s a struggle of orthodoxy against revolutionaries, and the struggle revolves around accepted worldviews, which take on an aura of the sacred. Belief in God comes ready packaged in its own aura of the sacred. The battle between scientifically based skeptical empiricism vs. religious belief is a battle of religions in a sense. It’s a party line seeking to secure itself against heretics. Atheists do not have facts that prove their views; they merely have worldviews that collide with the worldviews of religious people.

Nor can the worldview remain constant by claiming “extraordinary evidence.” As has been demonstrated, there is no basis for comparison since belief in God is not a scientific question. There is no basis upon which to define “extraordinary evidence” since the term is measured by proximity to orthodoxy. In other words, what is really going to determine the extraordinary nature of a claim for a skeptic is its relation to the paradigm under which the skeptic has formed his worldview. That means that extraordinary evidence must be that evidence which, despite it’s status as an anomaly under the skeptic’s paradigm, and thus its tendency to be explained away by the paradigm, (“absorbed” to put it in Kuhn’s parlance). In other words, the atheist demand for extraordinary evidence is impossibility and cannot ever be met because it is a logical contradiction; it is evidence that does something no skeptic can ever admit evidence can do, it would convince the skeptic that his paradigm is wrong and that he must adopt a new paradigm. But the point of being a skeptic is to defend the paradigm one already works under. The skeptic is asking he impossible to begin with since changing the paradigm doesn’t result from dazzling evidence or wonderment evoking evidence, but from constant anomalies, which become so bothersome they cannot be absorbed into the accepted paradigm any longer. But particular anomalies are not going to be seen as “extraordinary” or they would not have its status as “anomaly” in the first place. Such evidence would have to supersede the normal paths that human thought uses to compile worldviews. In short, the Saganian imperative is wrong. It not only contradicts the way scientific theories come to be accepted in the world of science, but also the way the human mind works in constructing an understanding of the way the world works. Of course we have to be aware that Kuhn’s sense of the term “paradigm” and the sense in which I use it here are not the same. He’s talking about the major paradigm, or model, that guides an entire discipline: such as the concept of naturalistic cause and effect. I am talking about the type of case one might make to advance a God argument. Yet the extraordinary claims dictum would seem to violate the Kuhnian sense paradigm shift. If we think of empirical evidence for religious belief as anomalies (such as the effects of religious experience as long term and positive upon the believer) the data from experience studies might be thought of as an anomaly. Certainly any sort of claim to miracles would be anomalous.

Moreover, the dictum about extraordinary evidence is also circular reasoning. That is not necessarily true, but the application that I have seen most often is circular. The skeptic says, “this is not good evidence, it isn’t extraordinary enough.” But the believer says, “Ok here’s more.” That doesn’t apply because we know from past experience this isn’t extraordinary, its too much like the other evidence, it wasn’t extraordinary either. Therefore this evidence is not extraordinary. For example say we are arguing about miracles. The Lourdes miracles have 65 examples where the official miracle finding machine of the church says, “this is an official church miracle.” The skeptic says “only 65? That’s not extraordinary, these are just anomalies. They are just remission. Then the believer points out that there are also 4000 remarkable cases, which can’t be explained but they just missed being tagged as “official” because they lack some perfunctory piece of evidence, but there is enough evidence to say they are “remarkable.” They do say of these cases that they are “remarkable.” One would think that “extraordinary” would be the same or similar to “remarkable.” But the skeptics just say they are not extraordinary they are just like the other 65, the other 65 have been dismissed for not being enough of them therefore the 4000 should be dismissed because the original 65 aren’t extraordinary so they shouldn’t be accepted and the 4000 shouldn’t be either because they are no more amazing than the 65. All that’s really going on is the 65 are being dismissed because there aren’t enough of them, but when more are shown they are dismissed for not being amazing enough. I can’t document that exact exchange, although I have been through it many times on message boards. Lest one think this is just an anomaly of the denizens of message boards, there is an example of major scientists acting this way.

Louis Frank, Iowa Physicist discusses a theory that oceans on earth were started by very small comments, house sized comments, which over long periods of time deposit enough water from ice that they make up huge bodies of water. Frank had evidence from satellite images that the rate of bombardment by such mini-comets is about 20 per minute. Astronomers responded by basically saying “if these existed we would have seen them.” In the 1980s Clayne Yeates decided to prove Frank wrong by demonstrating the results of telescopic search. Yeates was told the editors of journals that the standard requirement for proof was two images photographed form telescope. He had the two images in the paper already. When he pointed this out to the editor of Geophysical Research Letters he was told that he had to obtain three. So the evidence isn’t strong enough because it’s a new claim that doesn’t fall in line with accepted belief, but when more evidence is provided it isn’t good enough, why? The editor doesn’t say this but it appears that the new evidence is dismissed on the basis that the old evidence wasn’t good so this isn’t either, even though more evidence was the requirement. This is perfectly in line with what Kuhn says happens; the old paradigm is challenged and thus is defended by the orthodox who maintain a party line and work to repair damage to the old paradigm. As long as the dictum about extraordinary evidence is waved about, as a standard, the bar will always be moved no matter how well the believer meets the requirements.

Marcello Truzzi has a proposal to replace the dictum; it makes a lot more sense.



Truzzi proposal:

In addition to recognizing and working through the issues I have raised above, we need scaled terms to deal with levels of evidence for the best of the extraordinary claims put forth by protoscientists. Scientists might well distinguish between extraordinary claims that are: suggestive, meaning interesting and worthy of attention but generally of low priority; compelling, meaning the evidence is strongly supportive and argues for assigning a higher scientific priority for greater investigation; and convincing, meaning most reasonable scientists examining the evidence would agree at least a preponderance of evidence supports the claim. Using such graded language might help us turn from our present debates, with room only for winners and losers, into dialogues between peers, all of whom should want to see science judiciously progress. We can all be winners.

The upshot of all of this is religious belief is normative for human behavior. It is not merely "normal" but "normative" meaning it sets the standard. Belief is basic to human psyche, to our understanding of the good, of meaning in life, the ultimate limits of reality, the grounding of nature and being itself, there is no way belief in God can be thought of as an extraordinary claim! We might think of it as extraordinary in the sense of being unique, like no other claim, but in that case it makes no sense to subject it to the regular canons of science as though God's presence is given in daily empirical data. Obviously the more intelligent evidential standard is that the evidence has to be fit for the claim. Fit, not dazzling, not impossible, not amazing, no beyond our ability to produce, but it has to fit the case. It has to be rational, and able to stand a prima facie burden, and it has to fit the proof attempted. The difference is that the atheist standard is Ultima facie, “all things considered” rather than “on the face of it.” The ashiest absolute proof, and that absolute proof must be furnished by just one standard, scientific empiricism. The Prima facie standard makes much more sense than does absolute proof, (1) because there cannot be absolute scientific data of questions beyond the empirical realm; (2) belief is an individual question of a personal existential nature; belief deals not merely facts about things in the universe, but about one’s place in the universe. For this reason it has to be subjective, it has to be primate, personal, by its nature it is not provable in the absolute scientific sense. There’s no use pretending that the absolute scientific umpire is the only form of knowledge. I will take this up in a latter chapter. The point here is that Prima Facie case fits the subject matter in a much more rational way. All we can ask of a world view is rational warrant anyway. World views take in too much to be demonstrated entirely from empirical data.

Atheists True Colors

I will be going back to atheist watch. The world needs a site where one is willing to expose the hate grup that masquerade as "intellectuals." The atheists are no more intellectual than Hitler and the brown shirts. They think like the brown shirts. their rhetoric toward Chrsitains is very similar to the rhetoric used by Nazis against the Jews in the early part of the 30's. I've tried to keep negative stuff off this blog and confine it to Atheist Watch. But I just want you to see the kind of games these guys play.

On
debuncking Christiantiy a site devoted to bullying Christians, to mocking and ridiculing all who do not cow tow to mob rule, an atheist named Ty starts a dialog with me. Supposedly he intends to rationally discuss my arguments.

He says this:

On your website you wrote, "I'm no longer an inerrentist." This was in an argument of how to handle God's atrocities against the innocent in the Bible.

Okay, this is a fairly liberal view by your own admission.

I respond thusly:

No it' not. Real liberals tell me I'm neo Orthodox.

he says this:

So, I want to know what standard you use to determine what is true in the Bible and what is not

.


Now I wrote three long responses. Three because his overall post long, at this point it was all very civil. I said this:

same way you would determine that in any document. We have to assume that miracles are taken on faith. Is it always important to understand the miracles as literal? Use historical analysis and literary cit to understand what is mythology and what is real history. Seek the theological point because that's the real truth content that is being communicated.

have you read my peice on Doxa about

The nature of Biblical revelation?

10:15 AM, July 11, 2008
Delete

we also discussed having a debate and some other things. Then he came back with this astounding bit of brilliance:

Joe,

you're an asshole.

On your fucking website you wrote, "My views on this section ar fairly liberal" in refering to your views of the canonical gospels. I was merely quoting your website and you write me back about your own words the following bullshit, "No it' not. Real liberals tell me I'm neo Orthodox."

Well, fuck you and the horse you road in on. Debate is about honest intellectual discussion, not the bullshit you're tyring to pass off as debate.

"why don't you go to college, take some literure clases and ask the teacher how to read?"

Again, you're an asshole.

what was the reason for this? Because on my site I said my view was liberal and on their blog I said real liberals think I'm neo orthodox. how in the hell does that warrant this kind of childish tantrum? Do you really think that someone who blows his cool so easily had anything to say about matters philosophical, theological, scholarly and complex? Isn't it clear what atheists are by now? They are a hate group. The exist to brow beat anyone who disagrees with them, to mock and ridicule religion and anyone who gets in the way is a fool and will be promptly disposed of through psychological methods of ridicule and brow beating.

I don't think it's possible to have rational discussions with these people. I don't the reason to even try. I beg my fellow Christians on the net. stop trying to communicate with them. have nothing to do with these God hating violent creep who cannot think or reason or have an intelligent discussion.

Or was it just that he got himself into a position to have a formal debate before his cronies could tell him I would have him for lunch, then he to blackout without saying "O I can't debate you you know too much." So he just stages a blow up. Now they are going to be saying "O that Metacrock he's so insulting. they are going to turn it to be my fault. I know they will. they will make out that I started it and they will spread the word all over the internet that I began the insults.

I said nothing insulting. to prove it I will post the three sections I wrote to him in the comment area and you tell me what is insulting?


I am sure that Hermit and anan will be sending in comments saying "O you insult people all the time." I have never done this to anyone. First of all I post on CARM where you can't call someone an asshole. I have called them ignorant and said they don't know anything. I never even did that for such a trivial reason and I never bailed out of a good dsicussion in order to fire cheap insults at people.

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof?

Carl Sagan



I have a page dealing with this concept on Doxa, but it's not very good. This is a better version. I will combine the two eventually.


Carl Sagan made this statement popular in its current form, it was originally used by Hume, Laplace and other early theorists, but atheists have sense taken it as a major slogan for their decision-making paradigm.

Marcelo Truzzi tells us:

In his famous 1748 essay Of Miracles, the great skeptic David Hume asserted that "A wise man...proportions his belief to the evidence,"and he said of testimony for extraordinary claims that "the evidence, resulting from the testimony, admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more unusual." A similar statement was made by Laplace, and many other later writers. I turned it into the now popular phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" (which Carl Sagan popularized into what is almost the war cry of some scoffers).

This slogan allows them to raise the bar for any Christian claim, while lowering it for their own purposes. Ed J. Gracely explains the basic logic of the bromide.

First, it is important to understand that the strength of a conclusion is a function both of the quality of the evidence provided in its support and the a priori probability of the claim being supported. Thus there can never be a single standard of "acceptable evidence" that will suffice to render every claim equally plausible. Suppose, for example, that a reasonably reliable source tells me (a) that President Clinton has vetoed legislation that places restrictions on trade with China and (b) that Newt Gingrich has switched to the Democratic party. Most people would be much more confident of the truth of the first report than of the second, even though the source is identical. The difference lies in the a priori plausibility of the claims.

A more precise formulation requires us to cast the a priori probability of a claim into the form of "odds" in its favor. A proposition with 90% probability of being true has 90 chances of being true for every 10 of being false. Thus the odds are 90 to 10, which reduces to 9 to 1. A proposition with 20% probability of being true has 20 chances of being true for 80 of being false. The odds (in its favor) are 20 to 80 or 0.25 to 1. It is more natural to translate the latter case into odds of 4 to 1 against the proposition, but the calculations require us to work with odds "in favor of" a proposition, even if they are fractional. Pieces of evidence alter the odds in favor of a proposition by a multiplicative factor in proportion to the quality of the evidence.

While it is clear that not all evidence weighs the same, some evidence is better than other evidence, nothing in this explanation indicates why evidence must be stronger for “extraordinary claims” than for “normal claims.” Assuming we can even indicate what “extraordinary evidence” is, what makes it more proven than “ordinary” evidence? The statement above merely indicates that probability is higher for a proposition backed by more direct evidence, nothing more. The rationale says that the least likely proposition is less probable, then the assertion that the evidence must be more “extraordinary” (whatever that means) rather than just accurate or valid or to the point is not demonstrated. Most assumptions about what makes evidence “extraordinary” or “ordinary,” or a proposition likely or unlikely is going to be largely a matter of prejudice. Consider the following statement, also by Gracely:
The principle is clear; the difficulty lies in the application. How likely, for example, is it that homeopathy or therapeutic touch really work? Proponents argue that we need to open our minds to new possibilities and grant these systems a fairly high a priori probability (say, 50-50 odds). Then, even modest-quality evidence would make the claims quite probably true. Skeptics argue that these systems violate known laws of physics and their validity should therefore be considered remotely improbable.

Who decides how likely it is that homeopathy is valid or invalid medicine? One would need a statically average for cure rates to compare with controlled group using orthodox practices to see this. He admits that “modest quality” evidence would be proof if it is granted a high probability. Without the proper studies why not so grant? What if one has found such treatments effective already in one’s own life? This is nothing more than prejudice to judge something improbable on the basis of guesswork and matters of taste. Why shouldn’t a standard of evidence adequate for proof of the issue under consideration, be the issue? I have so far been unable to find an atheist who can tell me what extraordinary God evidence is. I’ve seen attempts on message boards, where they argue absurdities like “why can’t God make all the stars spell out the phrase “burn pain is the worst pain, Jesus is Lord, convert now.” Or God could appear at the UN and hold a press conference. I have yet to see an atheist give me a valid option for “extraordinary evidence.” More importantly, we are talking about God, not about finding Bigfoot. God is off scale for empirical investigation. How can the basis of reality be studied as though just another “thing” in creation? What could be used as a basis of comparison? How could one ever establish a base line comparison to determine probability of God? Dawkns tries it but he merely assumes God would be on a par with any other physical object. What basis is used to establish the probability of something that is said to be beyond our understanding?

Gracely argues:

An alternative I have heard suggested is to drop the extraordinary proof argument and instead to hold paranormal and alternative medicine claims strictly to the ordinary requirements of replicability and good research. This approach sounds sensible but it has a serious flaw. Skeptics are not willing to accept the plausibility of most paranormal claims unless the evidence is extremely strong. We risk being perceived (correctly) as disingenuous if we call for solid quality research, then revert to the extraordinary claims argument should it in fact appear.(Ibid)

This standard is the one I have been proposing for years. The term he doesn’t use, the proper term for “ordinary” level of proof would be a “prima facie case.” He may have a point if we are talking about acupuncture or UFOs but the flaw he sees in it is attitudinal, not logical or methodological. The attitude of skeptics is out of line anyway. Atheists are not willing to accept any level of evidence. The experience studies are fine studies, they are scientific and a huge body of work backs them up. For all practical purposes, they are “extraordinary evidence.” Let us not forget there is no set standard any skeptic can offer to define that term. Skeptics are quick to brush aside the experience studies as “subjective” without reading the studies or thinking about the arguments. They never define what “extraordinary” evidence would be. Gracely observes that skeptical attitudes are similar even in other areas:

In some areas of paranormal investigation, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), the research is already often better done than much orthodox scientific research, with controls and double-checks most scientists would regard as overkill. Skeptics mostly still feel that the intrinsic implausibility is so great that nothing short of airtight and well-repeated research would be sufficient to support ESP. Little or none of the existing research rises to that level, so we remain skeptical. (Some recent work has been of high quality, see Ray Hyman's article, "The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs. Reality", in the March/April 1996 Skeptical Inquirer, pp 24-26.) Had skeptics said some 40 years ago that all we wanted was reasonable quality replicated research, we might now be having to eat our words.

Skeptics are never satisfied. I have seen this problem over and over again. When their demands for evidence are met, they just raise the bar again and again. The tyranny of “extraordinary evidence” so long as one never defines it, allows for this sort of abuse all t he time. More importantly, why should God be subjected to the same standards of proof as empirical objects? Here the skeptic is just in the position of arguing “God is improbable because I don’t believe in him.” Truzzi documents the “catch 22” designed into the extraordinary proof standard:

But it is important to remember that the proponent of the paranormal has an uphill battle from the start. The chips are stacked against him, so his assault is not so threatening to the fabric of science as scoffers often characterize it. In a sense, conservative science has "the law" on its side.
In law, we find three varieties in the weight of burden of proof:
1. proof by preponderance of evidence,
2. clear and convincing proof, and, in criminal law,
3. proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
In conventional science, we usually use (1), but when dealing with extraordinary claims, critics often seem to demand (3) since they demand all alternative explanations must be eliminated before the maverick claim is acceptable. This demand sometimes becomes unreasonable and may even make the scoffer's position unfalsifiable. Since the anomaly proponent is already saddled with a presumption of "guilt," it would seem to me that (2), clear and convincing proof, might be the best standard, though proponents may reasonably wonder why standard (1) should always be denied them.(Ibid)

But we must also keep in mind that God is not “paranormal.” Truzzi and Gracely are speaking in general of any sort of “paranormal” claim, including the claims of alternative medicine. God is not paranormal, but is status quo, normative for human belief. Nor is God a scientific question. It is absurd to expect us to limit evidence to only the scientific when the question about belief is epistemological. More on this aspect of belief and it is import for evidential standards below. But this does raise a further question about the extraordinary evidential standard:
In addition to defining the term “extraordinary evidence” there is also a need to define the term “extraordinary claim.” Why is God an extraordinary claim? Here the atheist is truly in the position of arguing “God is improbable because I don’t believe in him.” Atheists make up 3% of the world’s population at best. The overwhelming majorities of people alive today, or who have ever lived, believe in some form of God. Our brains are hard wired to have thoughts of God. Our physical and mental health work better when we believe in God (as will be seen in latter chapters). Obviously we are fit for belief, why would belief be extraordinary? Why should we allow the minor little 3% minority to define what is normative for humanity? Belief in God is is far more than just the average belief; it is normative as a standard of human understanding. It forms the basis of our psyches, it forms the basis of our legal system; it is the chief metaphor regulating meaning and morality. Belief in God illustrates all the aspects of a prima facie case. This is at least so for RE. Marcelo Truzzi makes the same point:

The central problem however lies in the fact that "extraordinary" must be relative to some things "ordinary." and as our theories change, what was once extraordinary may become ordinary (best seen in now accepted quantum effects that earlier were viewed as "impossible"). Many now extraordinary claims may become more acceptable not when they are replicated but when theoretical contexts change to make them more welcome.(Ibid)

Skeptics have argued that religious experience is not regular or consistent because such experiences are all different. Not only do you have so many different religions, but also even from mystic to mystic things differ. Over the years as one develops a disciplined life of prayer, one does encounter growing diversity and newness, but a certain sense of the familiar as well. Experiences become regular and consistent in that the presence of God is usually found in prayer, the sense of the presence is always the of the same quality (although varying intensity) and the sense of God can become familiar enough that it is always recognized as the same, This sense of the familiar is communicable and can be recognized form one believer to another. The mystical and devotional literature presents a kind of ordered sameness. One can read accounts as different form one experiencer to another as those between St. Augustine and A.W. Tozer and still find passages that seem to be talking about the same things. This is amplified times millions of believers in the history of the church who have experienced the same things. Even though there is diversification and difference there is still sameness. This is not even confined to mystics. The same can be said of conversion accounts that the same aspects keep popping up. Once can recognize the work of God from one person to another, form one time to the next, from one culture to all cultures. But, the skeptic will ask, what about the vast array of different religions? These differences are due to cultural constructs. One experiences God beyond words, and when one tries to speak of such experiences one must encode them in a symbolic universe, that is to say, in culture. These differences in symbolic universes over time have spelled out the differences in the many religions. But there is a cretin unity even between all the differences in religion. The data presented long term effects of religious experience (see articles on RE in this blog) represents typologies, which can be used to compare "peak experience" with that of other phenomena. The Peak experiencers can be grouped together into a collection of those who have experiences X. They are not isolated assortments of differing phenomena. These studies do represent differing cultures and times. Thus, religious experience has a consistency to it even between cultures.

Archetypal symbology universal.


Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences. Abraham H. Maslow
Appendix I. An Example of B-Analysis

"...Jungian archetypes which can be recovered in several ways. I have managed to get it in good introspects simply by asking them directly to free associate to a particular symbol. The psychoanalytic literature, of course, has many such reports. Practically every deep case history will report such symbolic, archaic ways of viewing the woman, both in her good aspects and her bad aspects. (Both the Jungians and the Kleinians recognize the great and good mother and the witch mother as basic archetypes.) Another way of getting at this is in terms of the artificial dream that is suggested under hypnosis. It can also probably be investigated by spontaneous drawings, as the art therapists have pointed out. Still another possibility is the George Klein technique of two cards very rapidly succeeding each other so that symbolism can be studied. Any person who has been psychoanalyzed can fairly easily fall into such symbolic or metaphorical thinking in his dreams or free associations or fantasies or reveries.

Archetypal Symbology linked to Peak experience.


The link from Archetypes to religious experience is supplied by Maslow as well, in a quotation already sited in Religious Experience Arguments. He argues that the ability to relate "B knowlege" to "C knowlege" where the female (Or the male) is blanced in the perception of the other between goddess and whore, and the proper ego relation is sorted out, is the managing of the sacred and profane. He points out that anyone can learn to see in this manner and that it is indicative of permeative people in their religious experiences as they explained the world through the sense of the numenous.
d) Anyone can have peack expirence --universal to humanity


Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences
Abraham H. Maslow
Appendix D. What is the Validity of Knowledge Gained in Peak-Experiences?
"To summarize, the major changes in the status of the problem of the validity of B-knowledge, or illumination-knowledge, are: (A) shifting it away from the question of the reality of angels, etc., i.e., naturalizing the question; (B) affirming experientially valid knowledge, the intrinsic validity of the enlarging of consciousness, i.e., of a wider range of experiencing; (C) realizing that the knowledge revealed was there all the time, ready to be perceived, if only the perceiver were "up to it," ready for it. This is a change in perspicuity, in the efficiency of the perceiver, in his spectacles, so to speak, not a change in the nature of reality or the invention of a new piece of reality which wasn't there before. The word "psychedelic" (consciousness-expanding) may be used here. Finally, (D) this kind of knowledge can be achieved in other ways; we need not rely solely on peak-experiences or peak-producing drugs for its attainment. There are more sober and laborious—and perhaps, therefore, better in some ways in the long run—avenues to achieving transcendent knowledge (B-knowledge). That is, I think we shall handle the problem better if we stress ontology and epistemology rather than the triggers and the stimuli."

2) Why Does God seem Hidden to SO many people?
a) God is not strictly speaking "invisable."


According to Hartshorne, "[o]nly God can be so universally important that no subject can ever wholly fail or ever have failed to be aware of him (in however dim or unreflective fashion)." Now the issue of why God doesn't hold a "press conference" has do do with the fact that God does not communicate by violating normal causal principles. In process terms, the "communication" of God must be understood as the prehension of God by human beings. A "prehension" is the response of an occasion to the entire past world (both the contiguous past and the remote past.) As God is in every occasion's past actual world, every occasion must "prehend" or take account of God.

It should be noted that "prehension" is a generic mode of perception that does not necessarily entail consciousness or sensory experience. In previous postings I explained that there a two modes of pure perception --"perception in the mode of causal efficacy" and "perception in the mode of presentational immediacy." If God is present to us, then it is in the presensory perceptual mode of causal efficacy as opposed to the sensory and conscious perceptual mode of presentational immediacy. That is why God is "invisible", i.e. invisible to sense perception. The foundation for experience of God lies in the nonsesnory nonconscious mode of prehension. So now, there is the further question: Why is there variability in our experience of God?. Or, why are some of us atheists, pantheists, theists, etc.? Every prehension has an initial datum derived from God, yet there are a multiplicity of ways in which this datum is prehended from diverse perspectives.

I agreed with Hume that sense perception tells us nothing about efficient causation (or final causation for that matter). Hume was actually presupposing causal efficacy in his attempt to deny it (i.e., in his relating of sense impressions to awareness). Causation could be described as an element of experience, but as Whitehead explains, this experience is not sensory experience. From Hume's own analysis Whitehead derives at least two forms of nonsensory perception: the perception of our own body and the nonsensory perception of one's past.
b). Atheists basically deny the validity of religious experience because they assume that all perception is sense perception.


Or, they deny sense perception to theists when they actually presuppose it themselves (Hume is a case in point).
c) All people experience the reality of God or the "Holy" all the time.


But this is at an unconscious level. However, in some people, this direct prehension of the "Holy" rises to the level of conscious experience. We generally call theses people "mystics". Now, the reason why a few people are conscious of God is not the result of God violating causal principle; some people are just able to conform to God's initial datum in greater degree than other people can. I don't think that God chooses to make himself consciously known to some and not to others. That would make God an elitist. Now, the question as to why I am a theist as opposed to an atheist does not have to do with me experiencing some exceptional religious or mystical experience. Rather, I believe that these extraordinary experiences of the great religious leaders are genuine and that they do conform to the ultimate nature of things. It's not necessarily a "blind leap" of faith, as my religious beliefs are accepted, in part, on the basis of whether or not they illuminate my experience of reality.

The upshot of all of this is religious belief is normative for human behavior. It is not merely "normal" but "normative" meaning it sets the standard. Belief is basic to human psyche, to our understanding of the good, of meaning in life, the ultiamte limits of reality, the grounding of nature and being itself, there is no way belie in God can be thought of as an extraordinary claim! We might think of it as extraordinary in the the sense of being unique, like no other claim, but in that case it makes no sense to subject it to the regular canons of science as though God's presence is given in daily empirical data. Obviously the more intelligent evidential standard is that the evidence has to be fit for the claim. Fit, not dazzling, not impossible, not amazing, no beyond our ability to produce, but it has to fit the case. It has to be rational, and able to stand a prima facie burden, and it has to fit the proof attempted.


sources:


Marcelo Truzzi “on some unfair practices toward claims of the Paranormal.” This article was published in slightly edited form in:Edward Binkowski, editor, Oxymoron: Annual Thematic Anthology of the Arts and Sciences, Vol.2: The Fringe, New York: Oxymoron Media, Inc., 1998. It is also found on the website Skeptical Investigations: http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/anomalistics/practices.htm visited 7/7/08

Ed J. Gracely ”Why Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Proof. This article first appeared in the December 1998 issue of Phactum, the newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT). Dr. Gracely is Associate Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine at the MCP*Hahnemann School of Medicine in Philadelphia. This article was posted on July 24, 2003. It is now found on:Quackwatch http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/extraproof.html

Abraham MaslowReligious Values and peak Experience,
text online: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/maslow.htm

url for my RE argument: http://www.doxa.ws/experience/mystical.html

Beyond God Arguments: Toward Belief Without Message Boards

I woke up this morning thinking about this. I mean in that state where one is dropping out of a dream this idea was already running in my head, like a word document you get to exist before you go to bed. I guess it's "heavy on my heart" as they say. It was a fully hatched idea as I did my morning "business." But by the time I got the coffee brewed I had already forgotten it. The time between dawn and now, which is 6:29 has been an attempt to salvage the fragments I remember.

I have thought of all of these things before. There's really nothing new here for me, but it somehow seems more fresh and its impressed upon my mind.

I guess the place to start is with the impossibility of proving the existence of God. This is a premise I have long sense accepted, since my usual tactic is to argue for "rational warrant." I'm not sure that this is even a meaningful phrase, much less a possibility. I think the urge to produce a heuristic structure capable of evoking in the skeptic a sense of the rational nature of belief, is find and high minded. It might be possible, if one can find a skeptic who is willing to hold still, so to speak. But the whole enterprise runs up against the following problem:

Think of the nature of proving things: Proving things is a "technology." I use this term in the Faucaultian (that is, the postmodern sense) as the manipulation of objects in the world. In this sense "object" does not mean a physical thing, but an idea. We mentally bring before our minds eye objects in the world, such as “being” or “science” or “existence” or the existence of things, the universe for example. We cannot bring before our minds eye a chunk of sanctifying Grace. We cannot manipulate God as an object in creation. Belief Is, therefore, a realization about the nature of reality, not a technology. The use of this technology requires that we have physical referents. We can manipulate ideas in such a way as to understand their reference to physical objects only so long as we understand what we are talking about. We cannot understand God, therefore, we can't manipulate God or bring God before the skeptic as we might a toothbrush or swizzle stick. We make arguments for God in order to demonstrate to others something of the r realization that prompts our own belief. We are actually seeking to trigger in them the same kind of realization. To do so we manipulate aspects of reality, and the skeptic proposes alternate explanations for the various aspects we try to manipulate. Obviously this course will have no more success than trying to cram God into the parade of objects we seek to present and manipulate. But the major reason we make God arguments is because we ourselves do not understand what it is we belief. We seek to nail it down. But this is an impossible task, since God is beyond our understanding. What we should do is seek deeper, ever deeper, experiences of God. But we are rational creatures and we must spell it out for ourselves first.

The God of the Christian tradition is the the concept of the basis of reality. God is Eternal, the basis of all that is (what we used to call “firs cause”) and is always already, and thus, without cause. This means that God is the basis of reality. The basis of what is, the “ground of being” can’t be manipulated as though an object in creation. If we knew the basis upon which the realization of God is triggered in our own minds, we might be able to suggest to the skeptic ways to trigger the realization. But we don’t know. Of course we do not know. All we really know is that once we realize God is real, it works to live as though God is real. What can we tell the skeptic? I’m sure that what I’ve said so far will bring scoffing and trigger an orgiastic bought of “aren’t Christians stupid?” That’s because atheists have cut themselves off from the basic existential sense of reality that enables one to have this realization. At that rate there’s really nothing one can do. Why even write a book then?

The religious a priori is this realization, the argument I make is not an argument to prove the existence of God, but to seek the realization. That's really the strategy involved in God argument making, we seek to show that there is a basis in rationality, a method to our madness. Of course this meets with varying degrees of success. Some atheists are willing to grant even a scintilla of rationality to belief, others are merely waiting for a pay off that never comes. There is a tendency to expect an argument even after it has been stated that we can't prove them. The pay off never comes because they expect that somehow out of all the statements that God is beyond understanding we will show some back door to understanding and make it plain. The less well meaning use this absence of technology, this failure to manipulate God as one more object in the universe, as a sign that there is no God. In a sense there is no God, if by "God" we understand another object in creation. Atheists, and many Christians as well, are always putting God on the level of a big man on a throne, so that God is just one more thing in the universe. This makes God subject to the universe itself. As though the world consists of all these bits and God is just one bit alongside the others: trees, rocks, energy, tin cans, bus tokens, swizzle sticks, God, loto tickets, ect. Tillich said that God did not exist, and this is exactly what he meant by that; God does not "exist" because "existence" is something contingent things go. God is the ground of being because God is the basis upon which reality coheres.

Atheists expect this to have a high pay off. How could God be that important and not be inescapable. Of course it could be that God is inescapable but they just refuse to look through the telescope. They wont look in the way that finds God because they would mean abandoning their control. By the same token we go on making God arguments because to cease would be to lose our control. We are both sides seeking to manipulate God through a technology, as though God is a physical object to be empirically demonstrated. We we should be seeking is a means of promoting the understanding that our faith is based upon a realization about the nature of our being. What atheists need to understand is that it wont makes sense to them until they face it as a realization, not a set of data to be manipulated. This is why belief in God is a phenomenological problem. It's a matter of letting the phenomena suggest their own categories. This is after all what the believe has done to become a believer. S/he has allowed the realization of one's own being to culminate in belief. The joining of a religious tradition is merely a means of obtaining a vocabulary through which one might speak of that which is beyond words. We speak of it because in the tradition we encounter others who have encountered the realization, and thus talk about things beyond talk is meaningful, to a point. It is only meaningful to a point, because we can say "O that sounds like what I've experienced." But to speak of it is still to load it into cultural constructs, and thus to water it down. The only sure method is to go back and allow God to do again what was done before in the obtainment of the original realization. Thus belief is a language of its own, shared between the believer and God that can only be hinted at in discourse between human beings. The only real conversation about God must forever remain a conversion between the believer and God.

The empirical information that we can manipulate, that is related to objects in the world, is the effect of the ideas upon the individual. We can't prove that a certain life turned out as it did becasue the subject was too Hegelian, or not Hegelian enough. But we can trace the effects of an experience if it is dramatic enough and if the changes in one's life in close proximity to that experince are dramatic enough. This is what the studies of RE demonstrate. The empirical effects of these experiences change people's lives long term and in dramatically positive ways. That amounts to saying "it works." The one empirical thing we can prove by way of demonstration is that it works to navigate in life as though God is real, and to allow the experience of the reality of God to guide our perceptions of the world. Of course atheists are going to remain resistant to this notion, they will continue to mock and to demand proof. It's not about proof, it's about realization. The skeptic will always miss it as long s/he demands "proof." The skeptics on CARM used to constantly warn against believing things without proof. The stupidest thing one could ever do was to believe something without being able to prove it. That's because they are hung up on a relationship with things. They have no had the realization of God consciousness, and thus all they can think of is technology. They think in technology, as though thinking this way is a language. All they can understand is manipulation of objects in the world. Of course one can hardly blame them, we don't understand much beyond this point.

The best God arguments, Ontological, (modal), cosmological, design (even though it fails), even non arguments such as the feeling of utter dependence, are all about reality as a whole; the order in creation, the reason for creation, the necessity of first cause and the contingency of its effects. This is because belief is a from of consciousness, and the consciousness is the realization of an aspect of reality that underlays and predicates all that is. The real achievement of the modal argument is that it gives us a clue about reality itself, and its predication. The problem is when we try to approach it as though it is a God finder technology. No amount of philosophizing can make us have God consciousness. Although I am convinced that the modal argument, as a mantra of sorts, is a gateway to the realization of God consciousness. I am sure one could criticize these ramblings as idealizations of arguments I no longer care to debate. Perhaps that's all there is. It is with all this in mind that I present the following. I do not offer these ideas as arguments for the existence of God, but merely as an understanding as to why the skeptical attempt at explaining away religious phenomena doesn't work. I think that's all we can expect in the way of empiricism, or logical demonstration: the skeptic will approach our realization as though it were a technology, and the skeptic will try to demolish the structure (perceived structure) with the technology of skpetiicsm. All we can do is keep deflecting the attempt by clarifying how and why our view is not a technology, not a demonstration, not an attempt to prove, but merely attempts at clarifying what we have "realized" through the higher consciousness. So I am moving to the east, so to say, by treating God belief not an the object of knowledge, around which revolves the qualia and phenomena of sense of data, but as a from of consciousness, the result of an understanding of what it means to be.

The empiricist path which the atheist trudges is the technology of which I speak. Descartes, even though he was a Christian, places the center of consciousness (the "I") at the center of the epistemic universe and makes sense data to revolve around it. Descartes is labeled "rationalist" but his project really kicked off the empiricist reaction. The empiricists take up with the same place but like characters in a Beckett play are immediately stuck somewhere. In this case, not a trashcan but their own need to manipulate objects in such a way that they satisfy their own need to manipulate. But this is a self feeding process, thus never ends. Unable to demonstrate definitive proof of the nature of reality, they will be forever consigned to reduce all clues out of existence. One can only imagine to which circle of hell Dante would consign them. I guess that would be the bean counting circle.

In reflecting upon the nature of reality, the aspect that triggers the realization of the divine, one finds that there is a continuum. On the one hand we have the demonstration of formal logic which is aimed at showing the predication of existence upon the necessary aspect of being itself. This pole includes the modal argument, and all versions of its grandfather, the ontological argument. The cosmological argument can be included here because it is really based upon the ontological principal in a sense; both deal with necessity and contingency. The other pole is that of personal experience; the experience of God, mystical consciousness, and so forth. What both poles have in common, what makes them a continuum is their encompassing natures. At both ends of the spectrum we are dealing with the nature of necessary being as the predication of all contingent existence. This is so for the mystical because mystical experience usually includes undifferentiated unity of all things. At the formal pole we are dealing with it as a formally presented conclusion to logical demonstration. For years now my theory has been that what Anselm really discovered was the feeling of utter dependence. Since he lacked the necessary vocabulary for phenomenology he tried to place it in formal terms. I still believe this. The stating of formal God arguments is really an attempt to approach technologically something that cannot be manipulated but must be experienced.

What can we do when the well meaning atheist asks "why do you believe?" Or when asked "How can I know that these "realizations" have anything to do with actual reality. Lack of a God forbid we should believing wrong, or that we should not be able to prove our beliefs! The only thing we can do is continue to elucidate the inability of naturalistic explanations to really explain things, and to point to the fact that the realization works for navigating through life. Beyond that the skeptic is going to have to seek God.

Supernatrual Empirically Proven part 2

The Supernatural is not magic realms, ghosts and psychic powers and fairies. It is an ontological framework; meaning it is hypothetical and philosophical. In practical terms it is the power o God to vivify (make more alive) and enhance the human nature. God's power to enhance human nature can be seen in many areas of life. Now of course the atheist would be right in arguing "prove that this is the power of God." That connection is provided in my argument about the co-determinate. These kinds of effects that emerge form religious experience are the co-determinate.

Empirical evidence of the supernatural is not big amazing miracles like the parting of the red sea. We don't have to prove ghosts and esp and amazing violations of the laws of physics because that's not what the supernatural is.



Dr. Jorge W.F. Amaro, Ph.D., Head psychology dept. Sao Paulo

(http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/amaro.html)

"A non spiritualized person is a sick person, even if she doesn't show any symptom described by traditional medicine. The supernatural and the sacredness result from an elaboration on the function of omnipotence by the mind and can be found both in atheist and religious people. It is an existential function in humankind and the uses each one makes of it will be the measure for one's understanding."

What Amaro is saying above is that the way the human uses archetypes and the concept of the supernatural is normal and to not understand that use is pathological. He's not speaking of an actual divine intervention, but the psychosocial understanding of archetypal symbols.

Sketched out below are eight areas where I feel scientific evidence of the Supernatural might be had. The most "wavy gravy" topic among them is ESP, but some might be surprised to see the absence of Ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. In my view the Supernatural is not about those things. Supernatural is a philosophy, an ontological understanding of the structure of reality, not some invisible realm of ghosts and unexplained phenomena. Be that as it may, these areas sketched out below indicate some aspects of Supernature which are found affecting areas of normal life, and thus they may yield indications or "rational warrants" for a Supernatural belief. NOTE: I am not making the argument that these are "proofs" Of God's existence. Some skeptics have met this page with the assumption that I'm saying "because these things can't be explained this proves God." This is very far away from what I"m saying. I am saying that these things are indicative of what I call Supernature. They don't prove that Supernature is of God, but they offer a rational reason to believe.

the logic is that of the "co-determinate."


Peak experience is validated through a variety of data. It is proven to be a true consciousness change. Moreover, it has powerful and positive affects which last a life time. Since it is an experience of "something" (transcendence at least if not of "God") we must conclude that there is a real external cause at work producing the experience. Religious experience is experience of something, something we usually call "God," thus it is logical to conclude that there really is a God to be experienced. At this stage we cannot argue that this is the God of the Bible, but that will be established on other pages. Religious experience is not merely a change in feeling or a veg indefinable sense of niceness set off by beautiful clouds or something of that nature, if that were the case it could not be life changing. That is is subjective is obvious, but that is merely subjective is belied by the fact that is and has been shared my millions of people (in fact on some level by the vast majority of people) throughout human history.

This notion applies to the feeling of utter dependence, but it can work also with mystical experiences. In this argument I'll focus just on mystical experience. The argument says:

*There are real affects from Mystical experince.

*These affects cannot be reduced to naturalistic cause and affect, bogus mental states or epiphenomena.

* Since the affects of Mystical consciousness are independent of other explanations we should assume that they are genuine.

*Since mystical experince is usually experince of something, the Holy, the sacred some sort of greater transcendent reality we should assume that the object is real since the affects or real, or that the affects are the result of some real higher reality.

* The true measure of the reality of the co-determinate is the transfomrative power of the affects.

This last point of course will be hotly disputed, but the reasoning is well documented and based upon the previous two arguments. Since we have seen that religious experience is highly efficacious in terms of its transformative effects, that it is nomrative and that it represents a dimension to human being that empirical reductionism reifies and misses, we should assume that the extent to which religious experince is transformational is a measure of its efficacy. To put it simply, it works, it changes lives, why shouldn't we assume that it is the affect of something real?



for complete understanding, see my essay on "The Religious a priori"

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(1) God Pod
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Scientists have identified a cluster of neurons in the brian which, when stimulated, produce feelings of extacy and thoughts about God and the transcendent. This is too great a coincidence that nature would just produce this by random chance, especially when taken together with all the other ways in which we are fit to be religious. It's an evidence of design, we are made to be a religious species.

http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/reli_102997.html NATION © 1997 The Seattle Times Company Wednesday, Oct. 29, 1997 Brain region may be linked to religion, Robert Lee Hotz
Los Angeles Times

Quote: "It is not clear why such dedicated neural machinery . . . for religion may have evolved," the team reported yesterday at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans. One possibility, the scientists said, was to encourage tribe loyalty or reinforce kinship ties or the stability of a closely knit clan.

The scientists emphasized that their findings in no way suggest that religion is simply a matter of brain chemistry. "These studies do not in any way negate the validity of religious experience or God," the team said. "They merely provide an explanation in terms of brain regions that may be involved." Until recently, most neuroscientists confined their inquiries to research aimed at alleviating the medical problems that affect the brain's health, and to attempts to fathom its fundamental neural mechanisms. Emboldened by their growing understanding of how the brain works, however, scientists are now investigating the relationship between the brain, human consciousness and a range of intangible mental experiences.

Craig Kinsely, an expert in psychology and neuroscience at the University of Richmond in Virginia, called the new study "intriguing." "People have been tickling around the edges of consciousness, and this sort of research plunges in," Kinsely said. "There is the quandary of whether the mind created God or God created the mind. This is going to shake people up, but (any conclusion) is very premature."

God Pod = Evolutionary Instinct

God Module" found in human brains. Sunday Times, 11/02/97 http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/97/11/02/stinwenws01014.html?1339720 by Steve Connor Science Correspondent

Quote:

SCIENTISTS believe they have discovered a "God module" in the brain which could be responsible for man's evolutionary instinct to believe in religion. A study of epileptics who are known to have profoundly spiritual experiences has located a circuit of nerves in the front of the brain which appears to become electrically active when they think about God.

The scientists said that although the research and its conclusions are preliminary, initial results suggest that the phenomenon of religious belief is "hard-wired" into the brain.

Epileptic patients who suffer from seizures of the brain's frontal lobe said they frequently experience intense mystical episodes and often become obsessed with religious spirituality.

Reaction only to God

http://marigjuana.newscientist.com/ns/971108/nreligion.html New Scientist Planet Science [Archive: 8 November1997] Touched by the word of God Alison Motluk

Quote:

a specific part of the brain handles religious experience, claim scientists in California.

People with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) often become obsessively religious. It could be because seizures strengthen neural connections between the inferior temporal cortex and the amygdala, the emotional arbiter of the brain, so that everything takes on special meaning. Alternatively, seizures might alter neural circuits that deal with religious experience.

To test these ideas, Vilayanur Ramachandran and his colleagues from the University of California at San Diego studied people with TLE, highly religious volunteers and people whose religious status was unknown. They showed them 40 words including neutral ones, such as "wheel", sexual and violent words, and religious words. As they read, the team measured the conductance of skin on their left hands--a gauge for arousal and an indirect measure of the amount of communication between the inferior temporal lobe and the amygdala. Only sexual words gave the apparently non-religious subjects sweaty palms. Sexual and religious words excited religious controls. But the TLE patients were disproportionately aroused by religious words, says Ramachandran. "The surprise was that there's selective enhancement to some categories and not others." He speculates that the seat of religious experience is in the temporal lobe.

Newberg Proposes God as Answer

from Newberg's webstie

visied 4/17/05

The answer, proposes Dr. Andrew Newberg, may be found in the very nature of our minds, in the neurological architecture of our brains. Our brains may, in fact, be naturally calibrated to spirituality. While acknowledging that neuroscience cannot unravel the puzzle that perpetually entrances the human psyche—did God create our minds or did our minds create God?—Dr. Newberg does maintain that neuroscience can elucidate the nature of mystical experiences, their importance in human evolution, and why the abiding need for a concept of God is imperative for the survival of the human species.

Andrew Newberg, MD, is Director of Clinical Nuclear Medicine, Director of NeuroPET Research, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Upon graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1993, Dr. Newberg trained in Internal Medicine at the Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia—serving as Chief Resident in his final year—and subsequently completed a Fellowship in Nuclear Medicine in the Division of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Radiology, at the University of Pennsylvania. He is Board-certified in Internal Medicine, Nuclear Medicine, and Nuclear Cardiology.

Dr. Newberg has presented his research at national and international scientific and religious meetings; his numerous published articles and chapters cover the topics of brain function, brain imaging, and the study of religious and mystical experiences. In addition to the extensive press he has received, he has appeared on ABCÂ’s World News Tonight and is co-author, along with Eugene G. dÂ’Aquili, MD, of the book The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Belief (Fortress Press).

Materialist Attempt at Explanation

God Module" found in human brains. Sunday Times, 11/02/97 http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/97/11/02/stinwenws01014.html?1339720 by Steve Connor Science Correspondent

Evolutionary scientists have suggested that belief in God, which is a common trait found in human societies around the world and throughout history, may be built into the brain's complex electrical circuitry as a Darwinian adaptation to encourage co-operation between individuals.

The problem here is why not just attach the "good vibes" to feelings of organization and cooperation, why associate it with "religion" which requires a much more complex conceptual framework? If the "God Pod" was just the amalgam of cooperative feelings it looks like simpelr cooperative feelings would trigger the effect, and it doesn't.

Moreover, this in a sense assumes that the brain has understanding of the concept of cooperation, and that it knows that religion requires a higher level of social structure and cooperation.

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(2) Maslow's Data on Arch Types
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Overview on Maslow:

BACKGROUND: Maslow studied with or was heavily influenced by Alfred Adler, Max Wertheimer, Harry Harlow, Erich Fromm, and anthologist Ruth Benedict.

HUMANISTIC OR "THIRD FORCE" PSYCHOLOGY stresses what is positive and hopeful in us. It was in part a reaction against the behaviorists' mechanistic, deterministic emphasis, and the gloomy, destructive character of psychoanalysis with its emphasis on the dark and destructive sides of human nature.

MASLOW'S PSYCHOLOGY: He wanted to develop a psychology that would deal with the best and highest potentials in human nature. He emphasized belongingness, love, affection respect for others, and building self-respect, noting that "all of these are largely outside the money economy altogether; they can be given to the poorest family."

POTENTIAL PRESENT IN ALL AT BIRTH: Stressed that despite unfortunate early experiences, we can change, grow, and become healthy. The potential for psychological growth and health is present in every person at birth.

INNER NATURE. We have an essentially biologically based inner nature that is intrinsic, unchanging, and uniques. It is not evil but rather neutral or good and therefore it is best to bring it out and encourage it. Suppressing it can lead to psychological or physical sickness. It is forever pressing fora actualization but is delicate and easily suppressed by cultural pressure and habit. If it is permitted to guide our life we grow healthy, fruitful, & happy. (Dare I call it "The Force" within us?)

HIERARCHY OF NEEDS. We each have a hierarchy of needs that ranges from "lower" to "higher." As lower needs are fulfilled there is a tendency for other, higher needs to emergy. Maslow's theory states that people tend to fulfill needs in an order of survival, safety, love and belongingness, esteem, self-actualization, and finally spiritual or transcendence needs.

EMERGENCE AND PRESENCE OF NEEDS. As in the Gestalt concept of figure-ground, just one need emerge into the foreground at a given time. Which one deends on which othe have been satisfied.

NEEDS IN THE HIERARCHY INCLUDE:

Physiological: food, water, air, sleep, sex. Safety: Security, stability, protection, order, freedom from fear and anxiety. Maslow thought we all need some degree of routine and predictability. For healthy persons, safety needs are not overwhelming or compulsive. If a person does not feel safe, growth becomes a secondary factory as safety needs dominate.

Belongingness and love needs. Intimate, caring relationships; affiliation with a group. Esteem needs: Esteem from others, he thinks, precedes self-esteem.It's hard to think well of ourselves unless we believe that others think well of us. Need for self-actualization: The Army slogan "Be all you can be" borrowed from Maslow's view. The full use of all our qualities and capacities, the full development of our abilities.

Needs to know and understand. Appeared in Maslow's later writings. (Perhaps related to having studied under Harry Harlow, for whom curiosity and the exploratory motive was a central interest.)

Maslow's point about Archetypes barrows form Jung.


Jung's Theory of Archetypes

Clayton E Tucker-Ladd
Metal Health Net 2000
"Understanding parts of our
Personality."

As you read more about personality theories, you will find other notions that give you insight into your self. For instance, Jung had a creative mind and besides describing the personality types above, suggested there are several parts of our personality beyond the id, ego, and superego. He believed that humans are innately prone to act certain ways and have certain beliefs, e.g. young children and animals are seen as "cute," almost every culture has created the notion of God and an after life, all societies have heroes and heroines, spiritual-mystical powers are thought to influence the weather, crops, health, etc., and the same children's stories are heard in all parts of the world (see Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth). These universal beliefs or themes were called archetypes by Jung. Instincts and archetypes make up our "collective unconscious," which is this tendency for all of us to view the world in common (not necessarily accurate) ways.

In Jungian theory, there is a part of our personality called the persona which includes the masks we wear when relating to others--it isn't our real self. In contrast to the publicly acceptable masks (Jung looked for opposites), there is the shadow which, much like the Enneagram, is our dark and evil side--our sexual, greedy, aggressive, and power-hungry needs which are difficult to control. If a normally well controlled person suddenly had an angry outburst, the Jungian might assume it is the work of the devilish shadow. Yet, the shadow is always there; it compliments the conscious ego; a wise person will understand, accept, and consider (but not give in to) the shadow's needs.

Maslow Makes use of Jung's concept



Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences, Abraham H. Maslow
Appendix I. "An Example of B-Analysis."

Maslow points out that the same universal symbols emerge in all people across culture. He confirms this connection emerges with the use of all psychoanalytical techniques.

"Now that may be taken as a frank admission of a naturalistic psychological origin, except that it involves a universal symbology which is not explicable through merely naturalistic means. How is it that all humans come to hold these same archetypal symbols? (For more on archetypes see Jesus Christ and Mythology page II) The "primitives" viewed and understood a sense of transformation which gave them an integration into the universe. This is crucial for human development. They sensed a power in the numinous, that is the origin of religion."

"In Appendix I and elsewhere in this essay, I have spoken of unitive perception, i.e., fusion of the B-realm with the D-realm, fusion of the eternal with the temporal, the sacred with the profane, etc. Someone has called this "the measureless gap between the poetic perception of reality and prosaic, unreal commonsense." Anyone who cannot perceive the sacred, the eternal, the symbolic, is simply blind to an aspect of reality, as I think I have amply demonstrated elsewhere (54), and in Appendix I."

Studies backs Jungs theory as valid

Philip Penny

A brief look at whether the Collective Unconscious is a figment of JungÂ’s imagination, and whether it has any successful role to play in modern Psychotherapy.

Copyright © Philip Penny

This is all very well of course, but it simply serves to prove further that there is little to justify the notion that the theory of the Collective Unconscious is an invalid one. There is much to support the notion that there are Archetypes, or inherited characteristics of human nature, and true to say that models of human psychological process based on this assumption may prove invaluable in a therapy situation. The question of whether this theory is an aspect of JungÂ’s imagination is a philosophical one and as stated previously it is beyond the scope of this literature to explore this adequately. The conclusion of the question therefore is left up to the reader as to conclude further may well simply result in stating a figment of my own imagination.

Maslow was an atheist. His view was closer to that of Buddhism and he leaned that way. But he is unique among atheists because he subscribed to what is called the perennial philosophy which is basically a way of saying mystical experince is where its at. He was one of the social science greats of the twentieth century. Here is a website where most of his book on "Peak Experience" is housed on the web.

Maslow's Peach Experience




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(3) BB cosmology = realm beyond nature
*BB = no physical cause.
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Even though I don't subscribe to the simplistic view that the SN is just a physical location beyond the realm of nature (another physical location) I think the fact that there may be a physical realm beyond our known realm of space/time (nature) is a good indication that there probably is more to the universe than we know, and we should not be arrogant enough to assume "there is no supernatural because we have no evidence of it."

John Barrow, professor of astronomy at the University of Sussex in England, states that the traditional Big Bang picture, with its initial singularity of infinite density "is, strictly speaking, . . . creation out of absolutely nothing."[ John Barrow, The Origin of the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 113.]

In a recent article by Tom Ulsman, he cites Cambridge University Professor Neil Turok who says:

"The problem we have is that every particle in the universe originated in the singularity . . . That's unacceptable because there are no laws of physics that tell you how they came out of it" ("Give Peas a Chance,"Astronomy Magazine, September 1999, p. 38).

*There can be no physical cause in the standard model;The Singularity is beyond space/time.

Quentin Smith, a philosopher of science at the University of Western Michigan, says in Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (1993):

"It belongs analytically to the concept of the cosmological singularity that it is not the effect of prior physical events. The definition of a singularity entails that it is impossible to extend the space-time manifold beyond the singularity. This effectively rules out the idea that the singularity is the effect of some prior natural process."

That in itself proves a realm of some sort, beyond the "natural." Now it doesn't prove the classical conception of heaven, of course. That realm ["beyond the BB] could be merely mathematical, or it could be another sort of "physical realm." But the "physicality" of it doesn't matter, we conceive of the "natural realm" as our four coordinate system of space/time. That something can be beyond that is a priori an indication that the "material realm" such as we know it, is not all there is to reality.



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(4) Downward Causality in
brain/mind research
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Rosenberg (Ibid.)

"Take the matter of 'downward causation' to which Harman gives some attention. Why should this be an issue in brain dynamics? As Erich Harth points out in Chapter 44, connections between higher and lower centers of the brain are reciprocal. They go both ways, up and down. The evidence (the scientific evidence) for downward causation was established decades ago by the celebrated Spanish histologist Ramon y Cajal, yet the discussion goes on. Why? The answer seems clear: If brains work like machines, they are easier to understand. The facts be damned!"[Miller quoting Rosenberg, Journal of Consciousness Studies, op. cit.]

see evidence


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(5) Religious (Mystical) Experince
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This is indicative of Supernatural because Supernature is divine nature which draws human nature unto itself and vivifys it and renovates it infusing us with power to live Godly lives. The content of these experiences is religious, and the outcome fits the nature of Religion's transformational task. Thus, it is rationally warranted to understand such experiences as possible examples of the supernatural.This is examined in greater detail both in the pages linked above, and in the following pages.


Evidence



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(6) Empirical Miracles
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The Miracles: A Medical Doctor Says 'Yes' H. Richard Casdroph. Logos Books Int. 1976. Scientific documentation of miracles is hard to get because doctors and technicians are afraid. But it does exist.In fact it is gathered all the time. See the book (above) Before and After X-ray photographs of healing. X-Rays are empirical scientific evidence, doesn't have to be a "study." X-ray evidence is direct scientific proof of healing and Casdroph offers such evidence form his own practice. Placebo effect could not repair a broken leg immediately.


Read all my miracles pages

there are eight pages, I hope you read them all. But here are the two major pages for evidence:

Lurdes

Protestant miracles: Casdroph


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(7) Near Death Experience
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See the Argument on NDE.

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